The London Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared in This Is London on February 23, 1999.
Interview by Steven Goldman. Copyright of Associated Newspapers,
Limited.

Leading The Thin Red Line

If Jim Caviezel carries the translucent shroud of shell-shock about
him, it's with good cause. The 30-year-old actor is, after all, a survivor
of Terrence Malick's Second World War epic, The Thin Red Line - easily one
of the most anticipated and perplexing films of the year. Still, it's hard
to say if Caviezel's aw'-shucks farm-boy bewilderment is due to the sudden
spotlight which surrounds his de facto stardom or the fact that his
performance somehow managed to survive one of the messiest cutting-room
floors in recent memory.

"My whole thing was to do the best I could," says the man himself, a
virtual unknown outside casting circles until hand-picked by Malick for
the central role of Private Witt - an AWOL grunt who returns to his unit
for the battle of Guadalcanal. "There were many voices who said, 'We could
get Brad Pitt. We could get Matthew McConaughey. We could get Johnny Depp
... Caviezel - we can't even pronounce the name'. Well, I told Mr Malick,
'You ask them if, when they first saw it, they could pronounce the name
Schwarzenegger - I certainly bet they were able to do it after a few
million dollars'."

In short order, Hollywood has learned to pronounce the name (it's of
Swiss origin and sadly rhymes with "weasel"). All it took was rave reviews
and a million-dollar-plus opening in the US, despite a release initially
limited to a scant seven theatres. And so, all of a sudden, Hollywood has
come to court an actor often dismissed in the past.

Dressed in a rag-wool sweater and sporting the requisite blend of
humility and braggadocio, Caviezel certainly looks as if he's the new male
lead. The fact that he is, in The Thin Red Line at least, is down to pure
luck. Initially 20th Century Fox decided to build an early publicity
campaign around newcomer Adrien Brody, who was central to the original
screenplay, only to discover that his performance was largely excised from
the final cut. (Among the other amputees from the million feet of footage:
Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas and a voiceover narration by Billy
Thornton; stars John Travolta and George Clooney survive, but enjoy less
than six minutes of screen time combined.)

"I was so focused on the job at hand that I never thought beyond
filming," says Caviezel, who spent 127 days on a shoot which moved from
Daintree Rainforest in northern Australia to the Solomon Islands. "Every
day I would say, 'Today is the last day of the rest of my life ... this
hour, this moment, this scene right here'. So I never thought I'd be
sitting here in front of you. Never conceived it ... I had simply promised
the man who had given me the opportunity that I would give it all I had.
And I knew what a responsibility it was."

A Catholic schoolboy from rural Mount Vernon in Washington State,
Caviezel describes himself as a "shy kid" who developed a taste for
mimicry at an early age and, soon after, the stage. "I would do Eddie
Murphy, just about anyone to get a laugh. But then when I started doing
plays in school, things began to change. All the nuns and teachers would
come up afterwards and tell me I just had to go into acting. Of course
there were two things I didn't want to be back then, namely an actor or a
priest. I mean, if I had my choice, I would have been a basketball
player."

Caviezel, nevertheless, soon made his break from hoops to acting with a
bit part as an Italian ticket agent in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho
- securing the role only after fooling local casting agents into believing
he was a recent Italian immigrant. With a Screen Actors' Guild card in
hand, he moved to California with his wife Kerri (the couple now divide
their time between LA and Mount Vernon), landing minor roles in lacklustre
films like Diggstown, Wyatt Earp and Matt Le Blanc's monkey movie, Ed. To
put it bluntly, Caviezel found himself going nowhere fast. "I was looking
ahead through my life, where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. It
was around that time I started thinking about going back to school to
become a chiropractor, like my father. Fortunately it was around that time
that I also got the call from Terrence Malick.

"I grabbed the phone and tears started coming out of my eyes," says
Caviezel when asked about the summons from the maverick director of
Badlands and Days of Heaven. "I told him that whatever he needed me to do,
I had the confidence to do it. That I'd be there for him."

And in the end, it was Malick - returning with his first movie in 20
years - who remained faithful to Caviezel's performance. "Towards the end
of filming, I'd get calls from my agent about new projects casting out of
[20th Century] Fox. But they needed to see this film first and I didn't
know who was going to be cut out. I could have been cut out, for all I
knew ... I just happened to be fortunate that I ended up in the situation
I'm in right now."

Whether The Thin Red Line can ignite Caviezel's career as Malick's Days
of Heaven did for Richard Gere remains to be seen. But the formerly
struggling actor will make dramatic inroads in the months ahead with Ang
Lee's US Civil War drama, Ride With the Devil, and the American football
pic, Any Given Sunday, which he is currently filming with Oliver Stone.
The roles are notably supporting ones in ensemble films which may not
give Caviezel the break-out he deserves. No matter, as far as the actor
is concerned. "After being involved with a project like this," he says,
"what could you possibly do to top it?"